Runaway
by Lady Shadow
Summary: Andrew has an unexpected talent and Neil makes the mistake of calling attention to himself.
1. Intro

_Title:_ Runaway

**Author**: Lady Shadow

_Fandom:_ All for the Game Trilogy

_Pairing(s)_:Andrew/Neil

Rating:

_**Disclaimer:**_ The following is a work of _fanfiction_. It is based on the ideas, settings, situations and characters of the novels _The Foxhole Court _and _The Raven King._ The author of this work of fanfiction neither owns nor claims to own the aforementioned ideas, settings, situations and characters. They are the sole property of the creators and owners of the All for the Game Trilogy and all other legal associates. This fanfiction is written for entertainment purposes only and no profit is made from the writing or publication of this piece. No infringement of any rights, copyright or otherwise, is intended.

_Summary_ : Andrew has an unexpected talent and Neil makes the mistake of calling attention to himself.

Status: WIP...? Maybe – This could be a standalone, but I may expand it out.

Series/Title/Pos? _N_

Sequel/Title? _N_

Prequel/Title? _N_

**Warning(s)** : None

_Genre(s)_ : Drama, sports, craziness

_Author's Notes_ :

The first book of the source material for this fanfiction, _The Foxhole Court_, is available FREE through various ebook venues (i.e. Kindle). Please check it out.

A review for the _All for the Game Trilogy _is included before this fanfiction. I highly advise that you read the book before reading this piece, or it might not make a ton of sense.

The writing of this fanfiction has been approved by the wonderfully tolerant author of the _All for the Game _trilogy, Nora Sakavic. You can find her blog at: Courting Madness:

_Beta_ : Fjuri


	2. Runaway

Cliché

The clang of the athlete's entrance to Foxhole Stadium echoed off the dark hallway. Neil let Aaron and Nicky pass him and then fell into line behind Kevin. No one bothered to get the overhead lights for the short trip to the lounge door and the hallway reminded Neil of passing through a dark tunnel at night with only the safety lights to reassure the traveler that they were moving forward at all. The door at the end of the hall opened to the brightly lit and comfortably familiar lounge where they found Andrew sprawled out on the long couch that his group normally occupied, fast asleep. Even unconscious he was not relaxed; he had one foot braced against the floor and one elbow wedged into the backrest. Neil was familiar with the position at a glance – if startled, Andrew would be able to get to his feet in an instant. It was the way Neil slept when he stayed with Coach Wymack. Unconcerned, Nicky and Aaron took their usual chairs on either side of the couch, leaving Kevin and Neil to stare uncertainly at the occupied couch where they generally sat with Andrew, who was arguably just as dangerous asleep as he was awake. The upperclassmen would arrive shortly to appropriate their customary places while they waited on Wymack with the details of their next game.

Kevin glanced speculatively at the couch where Matt normally sat between Renee and Dan, and then at the chair that Allison would now occupy alone. He apparently decided that risking death by a suddenly awakened Andrew was preferable to sharing space with the upperclassmen. Kevin folded himself to the floor in the middle of the couch with athletic grace, tucking one knee up to his chest and resting his scarred left hand across the top of it. He flexed his fingers slowly, entranced by the scars and not paying a moment's attention to Neil, still standing at the edge of the carpet uncertainly. Neil didn't feel particularly confident putting himself either at Andrew's head or his feet. Both options seemed like a prime way to get himself injured when Andrew eventually woke up, and he didn't like having people out of his line of sight; sitting next to Kevin on the floor would put either Aaron or Nicky completely out of view and block the doorway unless he leaned forward.

"Stop hovering. You're making me nervous," Nicky said finally, half an octave away from whining. Neil stepped behind Nicky's chair and leaned against the wall as the only safe alternative that let him keep the whole room in sight. Nicky twisted around to look up at him. "Like _that_ makes me feel better."

"Deal with it," Neil answered easily and the older man huffed, then twisted in the chair so he would be able to see Neil in his peripheral vision. His cellphone came out a moment later and silence fell over the lounge, punctuated only by the taptaptapclick of Nicky's fingers on the touch screen. Neil's fingers itched for his racquet and he was irritated by the delay. They could easily be running drills while they waited for Coach and the upperclassmen. Neil watched Kevin instead. The champion was an enigma. On the court, he was a king – nothing could touch him, no one could push him, and he was ruthless to the point of being abusive. Off the court, he seemed to just... disappear. Watching Kevin without a racquet was like looking at an empty Kevin suit. He simply deflated, dull eyed and lackluster, as if his spirit remained locked on the court while his body was away, impatient and demanding his return. Neil understood that kind of emptiness. Hadn't he experienced it for eight years on the run, where the only safe place was remembering his little league games, the weight of a racquet in his hands, the crack of a ricochet?

The outside door slammed open. A moment later Renee and Dan came through the lounge door with Matt on their heels. Renee had a section of her short white hair pinned up with a pink beret so that a one inch-long stripe of lemon yellow rested on her cheek and the rest was pushed behind her ears. Allison was missing from the group, but Neil noted this only clinically so he could keep a portion of his attention on the door. Matt tossed himself onto the open couch in an easy sprawl and Neil frowned at him- he carried a shiny new acoustic guitar by the neck and had a neon green pick between his lips. Dan slipped in against his left side, twisting around the neck of the guitar and molding herself to his back. Renee perched on his opposite side, half leaning on the arm of the couch to give Matt room to position himself over the body of the instrument.

Uncaring of a sleeping Andrew, Matt started to play. He hit the first chord, made an awkward change to the second, and then badly missed the third. Neil winced and watched uncomfortably while Matt adjusted his hand to play the third chord again and then went back to the beginning. Hit the first, missed the second, started over. Once he made it through the first four chords without missing a fingering, he started to sing softly. Every time he missed a note, he would start over until Neil was ready to hide his ears in a couch cushion even if it meant risking Andrew's unconscious violence to escape.

"Can you be done now?" Aaron asked grumpily when Matt started over for the sixth time.

"I'm learning," Matt answered, not even bothering to look at Aaron as he figured out the fingering for his chord and started yet again.

Having apparently had enough, Kevin lifted his gaze from the scars on his left hand and glowered at Matt. "This is a waste of your time and talent," he all but snarled. Kevin didn't realize that he'd inadvertently complimented their backliner, but Matt didn't miss it. He grinned broadly and ducked his head to start for the eighth time.

"There has to be something more to life than exy, Kevin," he said around the pick, tapping his fingers over the strings until he thought he had the chords down.

The look Kevin gave him suggested that he agreed with that statement about as much as he would love finger painting with manure. Neil agreed with Kevin, but he didn't speak up. Matt dividing his attention any further than it already was between learning a new position, school, and the looming game was unthinkable as far as Neil was concerned.

"You're off key."

Neil jerked in surprise and Kevin nearly jumped out of his skin at the unexpected comment from Andrew, who was still breathing evenly with his eyes closed. If it weren't for his hand shooting out to grab Kevin's shoulder and force him back to the floor, they all might have assumed Andrew was talking in his sleep. Neil moved a little further away from the couch. Apparently having less self-preservation instincts, Kevin scooted closer to Andrew and didn't seem to mind the tight grip on his shoulder in the least.

Matt paused only briefly to toss a glare at Andrew before starting again. "You're off key," Andrew announced to the room at large, louder this time. Matt ignored him and continued through the section, making it past the first verse for the first time. Once the chorus hit, Neil finally recognized the song and it made his heartbeat flutter. He reached down to clutch at his phone through the pocket of his running pants. How could Matt have known? Of course, he couldn't: Neil's call log still had only two entries and Matt couldn't know, but it was an uncomfortable coincidence. If Matt could just _play_ it, he wouldn't be butchering the song exactly. He had a pleasant voice. It was nothing extraordinary or even unique, but pleasant enough to be passable.

"You're off key, you're off key, you're off key," Andrew sing-songed, getting progressively louder until Matt was shouting over him and messing up the chords so badly they weren't even recognizable. He finally stopped on a discordant note and pressed his open hand against the strings to stop the jangling noise.

"Did you have something to say, Andrew?" Matt asked sourly, glaring at him.

Opening his eyes, Andrew blinked at Matt as though he'd only just noticed that he wasn't alone in the lounge. "Oh, was that you making that noise? Did you know you were off key?" If it weren't for the vicious smile and it had been anyone but Andrew, it might have been a polite enough comment.

"Like you could do better?" Dan asked acidly before Matt could get his mouth open to respond.

Andrew considered this for a moment and then brought his knees up to his chest and bounced off the couch, narrowly missing landing in Kevin's lap. Andrew reached across the coffee table and wrapped a hand around the neck of the guitar. Matt was so startled that he didn't have time to yank it back before Andrew had it out of his lap and was back on the opposite couch. Matt jumped to his feet and Nicky looked worriedly between them

"Andrew..." Nicky tried, but was drowned out by Matt's bull-like shout.

"Oh, sit down, I'm not going break it." Andrew barely looked up at Matt, but his tone ended on a worrisome note that seemed to say _yet_. Matt took an abortive step around the coffee table, but Andrew stopped him with a confident strum of all six stings. He made a little clucking noise and adjusted the fourth string before trying again.

Apparently satisfied, he jumped right into the same song, fingers stroking easily over the strings. It was startling enough to make Matt sit back down, and everyone except Nicky and Aaron stared at Andrew in open-mouthed shock. And then he began to sing.

Where Matt's voice had been pleasant, Andrew's was a force of nature. Neil's hand closed on his phone again and he swallowed hard. He'd only heard a brief piece of the song played in the locker room the night Andrew convinced him to keep the cell phone. He knew another portion of it played on Andrew's phone if he received a call from Neil, but he'd never guessed that Andrew had recorded it himself. It didn't seem possible that such a violently uncaring person could contain so much talent in one small body. More than impossible, it was unfair – he could play his goal at world class levels even when he wasn't trying, and had other talents besides? Neil watched Andrew's fingers on the strings and tried to imagine what else those small, strong hands might be capable of if pressed. Art? Sculpting? Engineering? Andrew's shockingly clear tenor seemed to suggest that any or all of those possibilities hid just under his skin.

Andrew's eyes found Neil's and his mouth curved into a wicked smile around the words while he played, half knowing and half challenging.

"_Go ahead tell me your name again_..." the song invited and Neil's teeth clenched tighter with each word until he thought he might shatter them in his mouth. His stomach flipped around strangely and he couldn't figure out why except the vague, paranoid thought that someone else might realize Andrew was taunting him for his made up names – all twenty-two of them, stretching back through Arizona, California, Washington, Canada, Europe, and more besides. All the names he'd sloughed off like dead skin, scattering a thousand could-be's in his wake.

"_Go ahead say it, you're leaving_ -!" Andrew's voice was rough and angry as he pierced Neil with the accusation, and it was finally enough.

He shouldn't have done it. His mother had beat it into him a thousand times: Don't call attention to himself, don't stand out, don't be memorable in any way. He heard her voice as he pushed away from the wall and joined in on the chorus. His voice was no match for Andrew's – it was barely classifiable as "pleasant," in fact, but he could hold a tune and stay on key. Andrew's eyes widened a little and he let Neil finish the last chorus alone. Once the song was over, he picked at the strings idly, strumming out a complicated measure of something Spanish, followed by a few lines of a nursery rhyme and then stopped the strings with a little slap. His eyes never left Neil's, and the scrutiny made Neil fiercely uncomfortable.

"Ah, multitalented Neil, here's another surprise from you. I'm always so surprised by it," Andrew mused in German. He grinned at Neil. "When you show me your eyes."

Neil flushed and took an uncertain step back, feeling his heart give a painful jerk while something low in his gut urged him to run, run away and never stop, but he clenched his fists and reminded himself that he couldn't be that person any longer. A glance at Kevin's curious face had him taking a slow breath and making the effort to relax.

Not giving Matt any warning, Andrew tossed the guitar at him. The backliner had to scramble to keep the neck from the industrial carpet, but he couldn't even summon an angry expression as he stared at Andrew over the curve of the guitar.

"Andrew!" Dan exploded finally. Neil would have thanked her for getting Andrew's attention off of him if he could just get his pulse to slow down enough to free up his throat for breathing. "How did we not know you could do that?" she demanded, sounding angry over it. Andrew gave her a pitying look and she amended, "How could we have never _heard_ you do that? You're good – you should be in a band, or recording on YouTube, or-" her expression twisted into something uncomfortable, and seemingly against her will, she finished, "Famous."

Andrew laughed. "Dan, oh, Dan. A tortured musician? I couldn't live with myself being such a cliché. Boooring." He looked down and blinked like he'd never seen Kevin in his life. "Why aren't you on the court?"

"We're waiting for Coach, Andrew," Nicky answered before Kevin could decide on how to respond, though his unhappy expression should have been answer enough.

"Oh," Andrew answered. He blinked around at the group and then shrugged and fell back against the couch, legs sprawling and arms flopping out into what might have looked like a casual pose to someone who wasn't used to sleeping like he might have fight off an attack at any moment. Andrew's eyes slid closed and he appeared to be asleep within moments.

"... Is he actually out this time?" Matt asked suspiciously.

"You want to poke him and find out?" Nicky invited. Matt shuddered and shook his head. He cradled the guitar to his chest like a toddler and looked back and forth between his own hand and Andrew's where it rested innocuously on the back of the couch.

While Matt was distracted, Dan looked speculatively between Neil and Andrew. "If that had been anyone else, I would have almost called it romantic, except it seemed too angry." She narrowed her eyes as if trying to puzzle Neil out. Neil turned away to hide the uncomfortable flush climbing slowly up his neck and leaned back against the wall to disguise the retreat. Stupid, so stupid, calling attention to himself.

Nicky saved him from further scrutiny with a laugh that Renee shared. "I don't think Andrew would know romantic if it bit him on the ass and then politely introduced itself." He reached up to aim a backhanded tap at Neil's hip, as if Neil could provide some kind of confirmation. Neil brushed him off angrily. He pushed away from the wall after a moment of tense silence.

"I'm going to change out. If Coach needs me, I'll be on the court."

It was all the encouragement Kevin needed, and he was on his feet. Neil tried not to let on that he was irritated at being followed, and just ignored the other man while he lead the way through the hall to the locker room. In turn, Kevin said nothing when Neil grabbed his shirt and chest armor and retreated into a bathroom stall. Neil got the door locked before his legs simply stopped supporting him and he fell onto the toilet in a clatter of armor on the tile. He crushed one hand across his mouth and pressed the other into his stomach, sure that he could feel the scars through his clothes, raised and ugly and each one screaming at him in his mother's voice. The sound of tires on wet pavement overwhelmed him, and he remembered the terrifying flight through Germany, he and his mother too exhausted to run one more moment, but staying awake anyways because stopping meant death. They sang themselves hoarse in an effort to keep each other awake: nursery rhymes, pop songs, and teaching songs in Spanish, French, and German. Neil scrabbled at the memory, unable to recall how that one song went in French with the black birds. It seemed suddenly important that he remember it, an unthinkable betrayal that he'd forgotten the way his mother's lips formed the words, the lilt of her accent on each syllable.

_And I'll take you for who you are_, Andrew's shockingly strong voice whispered over the panic and Neil's eyes snapped open. The hiss of tires on pavement vanished in a crackle of flames and the ghost of burning gasoline, and Neil was left shaking in a bathroom stall with his chest armor at his feet. He breathed slowly through his nose until the shape of the scars beneath his clothes resolved into the creases of his tee shirt.

A sharp rap against the stall door made him jump. "Hurry up!" Kevin snapped and everything was right with the world again. Neil couldn't respond, but Kevin didn't expect him to respond, only to obey. The man stalked out and Neil watched his feet disappear around the corner. He held his hands out and eyed them until they stopped shaking. Once they were steady again, he stood and pulled his shirt over his head to replace it with the chest armor. He gave himself several violent shakes to make sure everything stayed put before picking up his jersey. His thumbs brushed over the edges of the 10 inscribed on the back and his name above it. The name was not the one he was born with, but it was the one he chose. Neil Josten was the first decision he'd made on his own after his mother died, kneeling behind her too-still body and flipping through the half-dozen packets of fake documents stored in the fireproof safe under the back seat. It shouldn't have been important at the time, just one name out of six, following twenty-two others, but he'd still gone through each packet carefully, shaking, trying to ignore the deafening void created by the absence of her breath. But Neil Josten was significant, and this was the name he fought to hold onto, that he would continue to fight to keep. Andrew wasn't enough to scare him off it, just like Riko wasn't enough to make him run.

He was just stepping out of the stall when the locker room door slammed into the wall and a heavy fist pounded on it several times. "Josten! Day! Get your asses out here!"

Neil rounded the corner to Kevin's scowling face, the expression accusing Neil's momentary breakdown of being solely responsible for keeping him off the court. Without a word, Kevin stalked after Wymack's retreating footsteps. Neil took a moment to shuck his running pants and pull his shorts on before following barefoot with his shin guards, socks, and shoes in hand.

Andrew was awake again, but he didn't even glance at Neil as he came back into the room. His head rolled gently against the back of the couch, his latest dose slowly kicking in and wiping away whatever had happened between them over that guitar.

"Do you think I call team meetings just for my health?" Wymack demanded hotly when Neil fell onto the couch on Andrew's left. Kevin was already sulking on the other side, eyes locked onto the back wall as though he could see the court through the layers of concrete and paint.

"No, Coach," Neil answered when it became apparent the older man expected him to respond.

"Christ," Wymack muttered, glaring at him. He grunted in annoyance and launched into a rundown of their next game. Neil listened obediently, but he was uncomfortably aware of Andrew's heat leaching through his thin shorts and he missed most of the meeting anyways.


	3. Review

Before you read: Go pick up _The Foxhole Court_ by Nora Sakavic. First – it's free on Amazon Kindle (and various other eBook places), second – you won't regret it even a little bit.

That having been said, I feel that this book requires a review before I get started.

I stumbled across _The Foxhole Court_ via one of the recommendations on my Kindle list. I almost didn't get it because usually anything with the word "sport" (or the name of such an activity) in the summary gets an automatic pass from me as I am not even slightly a sports' fan, but I was bored, it was free, and so what did I have to lose? I am so excited that I was feeling bored and a little adventurous that day, because _The Foxhole Court _(and it's sequel _The Raven King_), have jumped way up the list of my favorite books. Here's what I have to say about it:

**The first few lines will hook you** – not through any magical wordplay, or shocking statements, or questions about _Life, the Universe, and Everything_ that you really want an answer to, but just because Sakavic is a strong writer and she shows her talent right out the gate. That having been said, the first 30% of the book (and I can say 30% because my eReader gives me percentages) got sidelong glances and furrowed eyebrows from me. You get introduced to a lot of... how shall we say... _unique_ characters right off the bat, and I thought most were ludicrously suspicious to start, but I won't give spoilers as to why. The whole first introduction scene had me despairing a little though, thinking that I had stumbled onto a talented writer with an improbable plot (Those frustrate me even more than a very non-talented writer with a good plot idea). The main group of characters are a strange lot, brought together largely _because_ they are a fractured, tortured mess. Every single one of them has some crazy traumas in their background, but Sakavic handles this _flawlessly_, and everything just clicked into place for me right about that 30% mark and I started loving it.

**The characters are real.** These characters are so unapologetically _messed up_, and they don't take every opportunity to discuss their bad childhoods and diagnose their own traumas, explaining why something triggers them into a psychotic rage just for the sake of the ravenously curious readers. In too many stories with traumatized characters, they can't wait to jump into bed and start the Trauma-Oneupmanship Game as pillow talk. You get just enough that you can start speculating on your own, and all the pertinent details unfold so naturally and so wonderfully that you actually feel for the characters. There was a particular scene in _The Raven King_ where someone from Andrew's past showed up and I actually felt a drop in my stomach and thought, "Uh-oh. This isn't good," as if I was standing in the room and heard the name out loud. It's the sort of reaction you want to give to a good book.

In fact, each of these fractured characters behave exactly like I would expect fractured people to behave without tripping over into melodramatic. There is really little to no angsting – they are each strong people who have survived a full curriculum at the school of hard knocks and come out the other side better for it rather than sniveling messes of _woe is me_, and that was so very surprising and so very pleasant from the reader's chair. I love a good angst story, but I loved even more getting to witness people dealing with their issues instead of just whining about them.

Another note on characterization that I found both amazing and frustrating is that the characters are clueless in the way that real humans are clueless. As readers, we've been programmed to expect characters to have amazing observational skills and make leaps of insight about other characters, so it was frustrating when Character A doesn't notice an expression/reaction/phrase of Character B's and instantly understand exactly why Character B is acting/looking/speaking that way. It makes you want to shake people and scream because _you_ can clearly see what is going on with the awesome powers of the semi-omniscient narrator on your side. Don't despair: the pay off is so worth the minutes of nail-biting frustration, trust me.

**Relationships develop at an appropriate pace. **_The Foxhole Court_ throws together a lot of people with some pretty extreme trust issues, but by the end of _The Raven King_ they've formed into a cohesive (though still dysfunctional) family unit. Half of the people kind of hate each other, but mostly it's the special brand of hate of siblings who have been forced to share a room for too long. That's oversimplifying things by a lot, but I can't get into it too much until you've read the books. The long road to developing this tentative trust between the characters is laid out beautifully and realistically. You might even start out disliking a few of them yourself, and then by the end realize that you would stand in the path of a rabid dog for one of these guys or gals (I came to that conclusion with Andrew and Kevin both).

**Sex... **There isn't any. /**Gasp. **Two of the main characters – Neil and Andrew- are falling into a relationship that is so perfect it makes me want to cry. Andrew is violent and unpredictable, and Neil is as skittish as a hamster who's had his wheel taken away, but somewhere along the line they've become shield brothers. They protect each other in ways that are almost chivalrous. This story being told from Neil's perspective makes it even better – he's led a life that most of us can't even fathom, and has had no opportunity to get close enough to anyone to even think of them as a friend, yet alone consider the possibility of something more intimate. The relationship between he and Andrew is sneaking up on him and everyone else can see what is going on while he still charmingly clueless. Considering his past, I love that he is almost asexual. Don't be fooled by the m/m romance tag that someone attached to it though, because you will not be getting steamy sex and googly eyes (though there's a chance of that for book 3 I think – maybe not the googly eyes though, because I can't see either Neil or Andrew doing googly eyes. It would be scary).

I find this no-steamy-sex-in-the-first-chapter thing so refreshing for an m/m story (honestly I don't know if I like the m/m tag at all because it is about so much more than two guys getting into a relationship -in fact, the relationship is almost incidental to the story). The whole m/m genre has been taken over by sex – even the great stories with wonderful worlds and engaging plots have to include copious, graphic sex scenes by default. That's fine – heavens knows I don't complain at a well written sex scene- but it is so amazing to find an author who realizes that many many badly written sex scenes don't make up for a badly written plot. Sakavic spends all of her considerable talent on making the characters and universe real and inviting, and when Neil and Andrew finally do get together (even if they do all their sexing 'off camera' -which I wouldn't mind), I can already tell that it will be worth more than a book full of steamy love scenes. Besides, that's what fanfiction is for, right?

**Exy is exactly the kind of sport that Americans would love.** I actually spent most of the first book complaining about exy – it's a makebelieve sport, and I'm not a sports fan at all. To boil it down, this is exy: construct a hardwood court the size of a soccer field, then gather up a bunch of hockey players. Wrestle them out of their skates and take away their sticks (though maybe take the sticks away first). Still alive? Okay, now hand them lacrosse racquets and a racquetball, and then trap them on the court by enclosing the whole shebang in an inch of plexiglass and locking it from the outside. Voila! Exy.

Because I have very little exposure to lacrosse (virtually none) or hockey (watched via Hollywood) or racquetball/squash (played maybe twice?), I struggled quite a bit at first with figuring out what went where and why the heck couldn't it just be ONE of those sports instead of all three, and what the blazes is a 'dealer' supposed to be anyways?! However, this sport is laid out so convincingly and explained in such loving detail, that by the end of it I wouldn't have exchanged exy for anything in the world (Actually, being such a non-sport's person, I might have Googled it to see if it was a real sport it's so well put together if the "made up sport" bit hadn't been in the summary). In fact, I think that Americans would _adore_ this sport, and by the end of _The Foxhole Court_, I was ready to go out and build my own exy stadium. If I had oodles of money, that's exactly what I would have done.

Also, if you have any difficulties figuring exy out, check out the author's blog, Courting Madness: and scroll through the posts a bit. You get lots of little extras on the characters, and some _very_ helpful diagrams, as well as the player's handbook of exy to explain all the rules and positions. Seriously – it's organized enough that you could get a street team together no problem (And let me know if you do because I will cheer for you).

**There are still the odd complaints.** Even things I love with all the power of anime sparkles and floating hearts don't get past me without a few little snarls. My biggest ongoing problem with this world is Abbey, the team nurse. I have a lot of difficulty believing that someone in the position of a health care professional would be okay turning a blind eye to some of the craziness that happens around her, or even with her implicit permission (like Andrew hanging out in her exam room swallowing antipsychotics with a bottle of Johnny Walker. Yikes). This is largely because my best friend is a nurse, so characters in these positions get a ton of scrutiny from me. It makes me a little ./snarly face, but I guess I can give it a pass because not everyone in the world has great professional and moral ethics. Neil also makes some _really_ questionable decisions throughout both books that make me want to slap him around a little (or a lot).

**The final judgment: **A book worth reading and re-reading. I read both _The Foxhole Court _and _The Raven King_ in a single day (okay, so I was up until about 2am with _The Raven King, _so I guess technically it was 2 days), and then set them down while I cyberstalked visited the author's blog for a hint of when _The King's Men _(book 3) might be released. And I'll probably read them all again when the third installment does come out. So, in conclusion: I adore these characters like they were my own friends, and (though I might want full body armor when I do it) I really just want to cuddle them all to little bits. My guess is that you will too. Happy reading!

Now onto the fanfiction.


	4. End Notes

Author's Notes/End Notes:

**Where the heck did you get the idea of Andrew with a guitar? **

This idea was pretty random, more a connection of disparate scenes and Pandora than anything carefully planned out. In particular, when reading _The Foxhole Court_ the first time, I really loved the scene with Andrew convincing Neil to keep the cellphone. It was the first time that I got a real ./lightning shock! That Andrew was a.) human, and b.) capable of empathy, and finally c.) coming to care for (or at least not despise?) Neil. Up to that point, I was pretty ambivalent about Andrew on the whole.

My mind snagged onto the mention of the ringtone being an acoustic version of a song, and even then I thought to myself, "Oh, I bet it's Andrew singing!" No idea why, except it suddenly seemed to fit. A couple days later I was on my way to work and Sick Puppies "All the Same" came on my Pandora station, and I started singing along (no doubt scaring all the drivers in passing cars). I've always loved this song for all that I'm not a huge Sick Puppies fan otherwise, but at the line "I don't care but I wouldn't dare to fix the twist in you," I instantly thought of Andrew and Neil, and when followed up with the lines "Go ahead tell me your name again..."; "Go ahead say it: You're leaving!"; "And I'll take you for who you are/if you take me for everything..." it seemed just way too perfect. These two boys are pretty messed up, but they accept each other with all the fractures, stand fearlessly in the face of situations that would make the average person back away slowly – I love every bit of it and the song fits.

Is it the song that author would have picked? Probably not, but who knows?

As a mental exercise, I used to put together "musicals" for characters – if Character A was going to sing to Character B, what would the song be and why does it make sense? It helped me get a better idea of my characters and how they related to each other. Listening to this song, I thought it would be a perfect song to for Andrew to sing to Neil (and, really, for Neil to sing to Andrew). I also noticed that the author, Nora Sakavic, has a thing for playlists. So combining that one little locker room scene with my mental exercise, a perfectly timed song about "runaways," and the summary note for _The Raven King_ mentioning that Neil gets under Andrew's skin, Andrew singing seemed like a perfectly logical conclusion to me.

What do you think? Discussion welcome.


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